, property prices in New Zealand have rocketed over the past decade and affordability has become a major political issue. The Irish property market is still travelling in the other direction for now with annual house price inflation hitting a new pandemic high of 15.3 per cent in February but signs of this softening are emerging.
As the Central Bank’s two-day webinar on mortgage measures, which concluded yesterday, heard repeatedly, there are multiple factors driving house prices, interest rates, supply, population growth, immigration, economic growth, remote working, Ukranian refugees. And while loan-to-value and loan-to-income curbs have limited price and credit growth and increased the resilience of the banking sector here and in other countries, they’ve done little to address the affordability challenge.